


across those forgotten plains

by hellbeast



Series: we are no heroes [1]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Barely Canon Compliant, Gen, Other, Sephiroth-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 00:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3189530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellbeast/pseuds/hellbeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(He decides not to dwell on it. Instead, for the first time in his long-lived life, Sephiroth decides to <strong>act</strong>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	across those forgotten plains

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Fifth Act](https://archiveofourown.org/works/362128) by [Sinnatious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinnatious/pseuds/Sinnatious). 



It’s the same as before, the same as always; Cloud’s sword strikes him that one, final time and he knows he’s done. He can feel his bones rattle, can feel his breath scrape along his lungs. His fingertips ache and his extremities throb and he feels a buzzing in the back of his teeth that make his jaw clench. His fingers spasm around Masamune’s hilt and the cloying essence of JENOVA holding him in corporeality begins to erode.

He falls apart, falls away into little pieces of himself and then all he knows is green.

(green like mako, sharp bitter mako that stings the throat and burns the eyes all he can know is green _green **green-**_ )

The Lifestream is both quiet and too loud; souls murmur steadily, a reverberating drone that makes his bones ache, and the consciousness of the planet looms, silent but deafening in presence alone.

JENOVA is a riot in the calm.

This is how it works: The Lifestream begins to absorb him and for a foolish moment, Sephiroth thinks that he will finally have peace, oblivion. He will finally see Angeal and Genesis again, he will apologize to Zack, and to the Flower Girl ( _I met this girl, her name’s Aerith_ , Zack tells him once, face smoothing into a small, pleased smile, _and she’s **great**_ ). He can let the tension fall from his shoulders and just **be**.

And then JENOVA rears her head, the very atoms of her existence an inherent antithesis to the makeup of the Lifestream.

Sephiroth screams with a mouth he no longer has as the Lifestream tries to _burn_ JENOVA out of him and JENOVA tears at any piece of the Lifestream she can affect. He no longer has a physical body, but the pain is still there, rotting away through his very _soul_. He blacks out often in these times, from the pain, and is shocked back into consciousness as two inhuman forces use him as their battleground (when he startles awake, there is the awareness that his mind is... spotty, things missing and filled with holes, for he is incomplete and at the core of him there are _gaps_ and _**tears**_ and-).

JENOVA has always won, so far. The Planet would rather completely reject him from the Lifestream than risk JENOVA destroying it bit by bit as it destroys her. So Sephiroth lives, again and again and again, sometimes knowing only his name, the feel of Masamune in his hands and the dark croon ( _my son_ ) in the back of his mind, guiding his movements.

 _I do not want to fight_ , Sephiroth realizes, the weight of it all suddenly on him. It could be that he has never wanted to fight. He, who was made to fight.

He’s not looking forward to another cycle. It seems that’s what his life has been all along – cycles.

The Planet and JENOVA are fighting around him, fighting _through_ him and Sephiroth has one last thought before the Lifestream suddenly surges around him; to eject him again, back into a hell of his own creation.

_I do not want to fight… any longer-_

* * *

“Sir, the Director needs those forms signed as soon as possible,” is the first thing Sephiroth hears after Cloud kills him again.

“I will see to it,” Sephiroth finds himself saying, with his mouth that he hadn’t had a moment ago.

He has eyes, and ears and fingers that are drumming along a desk of their own accord. There are stacks of forms piled on the desk and-

There’s a SOLDIER, Third Class, standing before him.

An actual SOLDIER, mako enhancements and all; a SOLDIER, the last of which, technically, is _him_.

“Remind me of the date, Third,” Sephiroth finds himself commanding easily, with a calm he does not truly feel.

As the Third prattles off numbers that stopped meaning anything to Sephiroth long ago – he measures times now by his death and subsequent resurrections, by how haggard Cloud looks as he sends his blade careening sharply towards the few gaps in Sephiroth’s guard – Sephiroth starts to wrack his brain and realizes that there is little need, for he _remembers_.

By the Third’s reckoning, it is nearing the peak of summer. Sephiroth is 20, perhaps 21 (his age had never meant much to him).

Angeal and Genesis are alive, are still at ShinRa. ShinRa still stands, the Planet still lives.

(He can neither feel nor hear JENOVA sliding through his mind)

It is…. terrifying.

* * *

(He decides not to dwell on it. Instead, for the first time in his long-lived life, Sephiroth decides to _act_.)

* * *

It’s easy, Sephiroth finds, to access the many files compiled by Hojo, bytes and bytes of “research”. An offhand comment on a passing interest in the professor's work and he was practically inundated with access codes. After all, Hojo has no reason to believe that Sephiroth is anything but his loyal creation.

Sephiroth knows – viscerally, intimately – the being that is JENOVA, but he is able to uncover so much more information about himself, and perhaps more importantly, about Angeal and Genesis that he had been oblivious to before.

Reading files on Project G makes his stomach turn, much as reading about JENOVA had once done. It makes him wonder, what had truly happened between Genesis, Angeal and himself (And Zack, dragged into it by Angeal, something Sephiroth would never admit he had never forgiven).

The thing he does not expect to find, however, is a series of updates about a _Cetra_.

He has the hazy memory of believing himself to be a Cetra, and JENOVA his mother, and that they were both parts of the Planet and so much more, and he cannot fathom that there is a true Cetra, one who had been living under his nose the entire time.

What is even more of a kick in the head is that the Cetra is – was, is – Aeirth, _the flower girl_.

He can feel the phantom memory of Masamune sliding between her ribs, easily slicing through organs and gristle, and so much blood flowing, splashing against the altar. He can all but see her hands clasped in prayer, her shoulders lowered even though he _knows_ she is aware of him, coming to end her life.

Sephiroth reads for well over three days, eyes flitting over lab reports and budgeting sheets and old photos; the only remnants of his childhood - his friends’ childhoods - made tangible. The thought is sobering.

( _dear boy_ , Gast sounded tired and so very old, laying a kind hand on Sephiroth’s knobby shoulder, _I hope you grow to become a man to be proud of_

days later, Hojo stands behind him, laughing cruelly as Sephiroth stares blankly at Gast’s body. two bullet wounds, centered over the left pectoral. that old, tired face set in a sort of resigned surprise or abject anger, maybe.

Hojo leaves the room, calling Sephiroth to heel, and Sephiroth finds himself turning from Gast’s body, unable to comprehend his lack of what he would later call grief.

“A man to be proud of,” he’d said.

Sephiroth already feels as though he’s failed.)

As General of the all ShinRa's armed forces and second only to Lazard when it comes to SOLDIER, he operates rather independently and he uses that sense of privacy to start copying documents and hiding them beneath three false bottoms of a secret drawer. He makes all his scheduled appearances, attends all the war councils, listens with a half-ear as Heidegger and Scarlet talk about forcing proud Wutai to kneel at ShinRa’s feet.

He plans.

* * *

Three nights later, Sephiroth leaves the ShinRa base.

He will not call it sneaking, for he has no fear of being caught, but he does stick close to shadows and avoid the guards’ lines of sight.

He uses the cover of the night to leap from the plate, controlling his ascent with the ramshackle buildings that creep desperately upwards. Though he lands as softly as he is able, still the ground cracks and splits away from where he touches down. When the dust settles, he chances a look around.

Sector 5 is so much like he remembers, and nothing like it at all.

To his surprise, the church is empty. The patch of flowers is bright even in moonlight, full of life. He takes care to step around them.

He can hear no one around for a mile and half. Some luck, he supposes.

“I know you have no reason to listen to me,” Sephiroth begins, as hesitant as he has ever been. He keeps a mental litany of _Lifestream, the soul of the Planet, Ancients_ going, in hopes that will forge some link of communication.

( _just because you can’t hear the planet doesn’t mean the planet can’t hear you_ , the woman – Ifalna – tells him, smiling gently even as Hojo and Gast hover in the background, one proud and the other annoyed

 _If you call with all your heart, the planet will hear you_ , she squeezes his shoulder before drawing him into a stiff embrace

he manages a weak smile in return, muscles unused to the foreign action even at so young an age, as Hojo shoos her and Gast away

he never sees her again)

The response is immediate.

_scurge scouring the blood from our flesh from our bones JENOVA spawn rivers that split from oceans it speaks Calamity speak speak speak_

“I believe I have you to thank for being here,” he continues, mind working furiously to choose each word with care, “And not being dragged from death again. My Deepest Gratitudes.”

The Planet is still listening, with waves of _waiting patience more wants wishes how why_ lapping at the edges of his consciousness.

“I would ask a boon of you,” Sephiroth finally admits, “I want to save my friends, and I think that the cure for Geostigma should work just as well. I was hoping you could reproduce it.”

The Planet strikes him.

As his knees slam into the hardwood floorboards of the Church, he can feel it _tearing_ through his memories, a tidal wave of green and strength raging through his mind, pulling things apart and rearranging and – he realizes absently through a haze of pain – _searching_ for something.

_Gaia's stigma plight of our fruitful surface curse plague death cure rotting flesh viscera rescind vulgar disease JENOVA spawn carrier_

Geostigma was a trigger word, then, for the Planet’s panic.

The pressure finally subsides and Sephiroth finds himself breathing harshly into the cracks of the floorboards, his hair plastered to his face with sweat. His bones ache to the marrow. His fingers spasm, hooked into claws and too stiff with pain to lay flat.

“I believe that having a Cure from you now can help prevent many events that all contribute to the eventual destruction of much of yourself,” The words come easy now, but rough from how he has to push them from his throat. It pains him to breathe, let alone speak.

_JENOVA spawn cure Geostigma the fire that cleanses the cold that burns pulls the very life and breaks it the black hole that devours_

Sephiroth, for all his intellect, can no more fathom the meaning of _that_ than he can fathom just how the Planet brought him back (or _why_ ), but the weight of the Planet awaiting his response pushes him to action.

“It was a purifying water, I believe it was the manifestation of the pure healing energy of the Lifestream.”

There is a rush then, from the Lifestream, something wordless but powerful. He can feel the electric bite in the air, the faint whine of something happening. Harsh winds begin to buffet the church’s interior from the worn roof and Sephiroth briskly makes his way up through the rafters and to the loose shingles.

The sky has grown dark, and outside the winds strike against his skin, heavy as the swipe of a behemoth; harsh.

No, not harsh – urging. Guiding.

He lets the winds tug him away from the church, deeper into the slums, past derelict buildings and the soft chittering of low level monsters. Far from the plate, almost to the edges of Midgar proper...

... To an old chocobo stable, abandoned and falling apart.

“I … do not understand,” Sephiroth admits, after a long moment of looking. He can feel the hum of the Planet looking as he does, using his eyes, his ears, learning the bite of the wind on his unprotected face. Knowing the Planet, _feeling_ the Planet, like o-zone riding his breath, making his very act of living something heavy, heady – is this what it feels to be a Cetra?

The Planet plucks the thought from his head as soon as it forms and then there is the sensation of being smothered, weighed down by so much life and it’s _too much_ -

“Please,” Sephiroth manages eventually, slowly, resolutely, “Please. I want to save them.”

The Lifestream draws back as though it had never been there and in a blind moment of panic, Sephiroth is sure that it has abandoned him, refused his request, cast him aside- and his heart leaps into his throat because what else can be done? Now Genesis will leave and Angeal will follow and they will leave him behind and he will be _**alone**_ and-

The sky roars, breaking itself apart, and weeps unto Midgar.

* * *

Zack is so so young, and the truth of it shakes Sephiroth to his core.

He remembers his first death, his true death, in the Nibelheim reactor; He can see clearly the look Zack gives him as they part in Junon; Zack’s frustration with his cowardice, the novel experience of someone treating him like a person capable of making mistakes, but also fixing them; The cheeky mails that made their way to his inbox, listing excuses miles long for overdue paper work.

The way neither of them acknowledged the possibility of being unable to return Angeal to his senses; Sephiroth out of what he now knows is fear, but Zack out of sheer force of will. The strength of a SOLDIER behind an all too familiar sword, that hesitance in his stance as he all but asks Sephiroth if they are friends. As though Sephiroth had known the meaning of the word.

(how _had_ Zack – his friend – died? if he was not fighting along with Cloud, then he must have died, for Zack was hardly one to leave business unfinished. That Sephiroth does not know, that he only **now** wonders, sends a shiver of unease through him)

That Zack, that man, is not the excitable one that stands before him, thrumming with energy.

Angeal makes polite introductions that Sephiroth tunes out easily, trying so hard to see any semblance of the Zack he knows in this eager, unsullied 3rd Class.

“Sephiroth?”

The eager, unsullied 3rd Class that returns his gaze with an overwhelming fearless curiousity, before Angeal smoothly steps between them, dark eyes taking in Sephiroth for hurts.

(Sephiroth can only feel that he is numb from whatever Hojo has done to him, can only stagger forward with a single-minded determination to reach his room and refuse to leave it.

His steps falter, stumble, and he begins to go down, hard. He cannot properly feel his arms, let alone his hands, and can only spare the brief hope that he will reflexively catch himself. Arms, strong and warm, catch him by the midsection.

 _Easy_ , Angeal murmurs, lowering them both to the floor.

Some part of him think he ought to be ashamed, being seen in such a weak position, vulnerable. If it were Genesis, Sephiroth would sneer and cajole until he was left to lick his wounds in private. But it's Angeal, who is kind and who cares. Sephiroth is shaking. He can only feel it now that Angel has a steadying hand on the small of his back, unwavering and calm.

 _Easy_ , those hands begin to move in small circles. Sephiroth remembers how to breathe. Angeal remains immovable, _It’s alright, I’ve got you_.

 _I’ve got you_ )

Sephiroth almost can’t help the fond turn of lips at the transparency of Angeal’s concern. How many others have ever worried for him, will ever worry for him, aside from the two men before him?

The quirk of his mouth must catch Angeal off-guard, because the tension drops so easily from his shoulders that he begins to regard Sephiroth with something closer to wonder. Awe. At this age, Before everything, Sephiroth was not one for entertaining pointless pleasantries, never mind playing _nice_.

“We will speak soon, Angeal,” and then to Zack, “Godspeed, Lieutenant Fair.”

* * *

“I think you might’ve broken my 3rd Class,” Angeal says days later, with good humour.

“Lieutenant Fair?” The question – statement – is moreso a filler as he tries to recall if he signed off on any missions too far above Zack’s pay grade. He has to remind himself that Zack has not yet grown into his skin and has not displayed a foolhardy eagerness to throw himself head first into impossibly dangerous situations – (Masamune sings in the air as Sephiroth halts the Ifrit in its tracks, Zack’s shocked face made pale in the dying fire) – _**yet**_.

“Your unsociable reputation precedes you,” Angeal continues, his meaning no clearer before he follows that up with, “I think the smile did him in.”

Sephiroth makes a noise low in his throat and starts, “I apologize-”

“Don’t,” Angeal cuts in gently. He smiles softly, kindly, “It was a pleasant surprise.”

Sephiroth dips his head in acquiescence, and it brightens Angeal’s smile all the more.

“How have you been?” Sephiroth inquires after a brief pause, turning his eyes back to the stacks of paperwork on his desk – planning has him severely behind on his budgeting. 

Even so, he sees the shift in Angeal’s posture, the defensive – if unconsciously so – folding of arms, and the hunching of wide shoulders.

“… I’m a little worried about Genesis.”

Slowly, Sephiroth places his pen on the desk, only glancing at Angeal out the corners of his eyes. This… is new. Angeal hadn’t confided in him before, had only told him there was nothing to be done, that Genesis would be better in no time. That Sephiroth couldn’t have _understood_.

What’s changed?

“Is his shoulder still ailing him?” Sephiroth pitches his voice lowly, makes his words unhurried. Still only glancing from his peripheral, he watches Angeal’s shoulders slowly relax.

“I think so,” Angeal admits, running a hand through his hair – his rarely shown nervous habit. Something about the action both warms Sephiroth to his core and all but freezes the blood in his veins. That Angeal is worried enough to come to _him_ , and share what ails him... Friends they might be, but Angeal must be desperate.

“Hollander has made no progress?” He moves the paperwork to the side; he’s not going to get anything done, not now.

Angeal’s shoulders hunch again, his fists clenching briefly, “Neither of them are talking about it.”

Sephiroth pushes back from his desk. By the time he settles next to Angeal, leaning against one of his many bookshelves, Angeal’s shoulders are so hunched with tension that they are nearly level with his eyes.

“How can we help him?” Sephiroth implores, keeping his voice low, “Will he _let_ us?”

The tension in Angeal’s shoulders disappears so quickly that for a moment Sephiroth thinks he might have fallen unconscious. When Sephiroth glances at him, his eyes are wide, his lips parted in surprise.

“I- I hadn’t thought- after the fight- that you’d want to even-”

The words still hurt, Sephiroth muses idly, despite the fact that he was more than expecting them.

“Have I been so remiss that you do not realize that you hold my friendship?” The words come out sharply, but not angry. Wounded.

“No!” Angeal’s denial is forceful, from the upward cant of his voice to the way his hands drop open in supplication before Sephiroth, “It’s just that you’ve never-”

“And I apologize for such… I _do_... care for you both. Please, allow me to help.”

Angeal’s shoulders drop again, but not out of relaxation. His exhale is one of exhaustion and frustration.

“It’s not a matter of what I want. If Genesis would stop being a pompous ass for _two seconds_ -”

Sephiroth hums in commiseration.

“I doubt he would so freely accept help from the likes of me, either.”

Angeal scoffs: “He needs to get over it; his pride isn’t worth dying for.”

Sephiroth cannot help the bitter chuckle that escapes him, but he ignores Angeal’s surprised, questioning look.

After all, _Genesis_ hadn’t been the one to die for pride.

* * *

Sephiroth escapes ShinRa headquarters at the next opportunity, stealing away at midday to the far reaches of Midgar’s slums.

The healing water has gathered in the troughs of the abandoned stable, but Sephiroth is hesitant to bring any of it to Genesis. He is not entirely sure that the water will work – soon after it had first fallen, he’d used it on a stray dog. He knows vaguely that it had cured Cloud and the others in Edge of their Geostigma, but he has no idea how it will interact with Genesis.

The dog had been fine, but then again, the dog had not been a SOLDIER, more mako than blood.

If the water burned the rot of Geostigma – the strains of JENOVA, the taint of mako – out of its victims, what would it do to beings _filled with_ and _**made of**_ JENOVA concentrate and mako? Would Genesis even survive the cleansing?

Maybe Genesis would be fine? He was human – more human than Sephiroth, at any rate. By Hojo’s records, Sephiroth hadn’t been born so much as crafted and upgraded over the ages. Genesis had parents, a mother who had borne him naturally; surely there had to be enough human in him to survive a purging of mako?

He couldn’t exactly present Genesis with the water and hope for the best, though.

He could hardly bring a sudden cure to Genesis’ attention and hope to escape Hollander’s – or Hojo’s – notice, either.

Exhaling sharply through his nose, Sephiroth carefully gathers five vials full of the water and tucks them inside a leather pouch. It disappears into the depths of his coat, a trick mastered through practice, not too different from what Sephiroth remembers of Cloud’s companion Valentine.

He sweeps from the stables and heads pointedly away from the Plate.

He needs to think on this.

* * *

Sephiroth thinks of Cloud distantly and abstractly as he runs through his kata the next morning.

He knows next to nothing about Cloud’s life; what he had done before Nibelheim, what he’d wanted to do after. He knows vaguely that Cloud hadn’t been a SOLDIER when he had thrown Sephiroth into the Nibelheim reactor, and that after, he and Zack had fallen into Hojo’s tender mercies.

Enemies of circumstance they might’ve been, but Sephiroth would not wish that upon _anyone_.

The Cloud he remembers is older than Zack had ever been, but he knows very little about when Cloud might’ve joined ShinRa.

After his warm up, he heads to his office and opens the registrar.

Finding little success in searching the database of currently enlisted SOLDIER hopefuls and ShinRa troopers, Sephiroth tries applications up for review.

An unbelievably young face, with sad, open eyes, stares back at him from the screen. Strife, Cloud from Nibelheim. Barely five feet, hardly over a hundred pounds. The face of the only man to ever defeat him, captured in weak, helpless adolescence.

Sephiroth logs out of the database and turns the computer off.

There is nothing for him there.

* * *

Shortly thereafter, Sephiroth is sent to Wutai.

They – President ShinRa, under the advisement of Scarlet and Heidegger – send him and a platoon of SOLDIERs, as well as army troops.

For a moment, Sephiroth fears that he has forgotten how to lead, how to command, so long he has spent raging to JENOVA’s tune. The fear is unfounded, and the speech comes easily, smoothly and he looks every warrior under his command in the eye and promises them his strength, his loyalty and his blade and asks for the same in return.

“I wish to see you all back to Midgar proper,” he finishes into the somber silence of the camp, “But any that fall will not be lost, nor forgotten.”

They storm the shores that night.

* * *

Wutai, by the end of all things, had become a footnote. An event thought of in passing.

After all, what worth had ShinRa’s conquest – Wutai’s near destruction – after Meteor? After Deepground? After Geostigma? After _him_?

Now, though, Wutai will not let him forget.

* * *

Weeks pass, measured in the amount of anti-SOLDIER monsters killed, ambushes deflected, lives lost. Bodies – each body that falls, irrespective of uniform – buried in the mud, beneath the blooming trees.

It is war. The taste of it is ash in Sephiroth’s mouth.

* * *

Time bleeds into itself, seconds of battle into minutes, hours, days, weeks, and suddenly, Genesis is there, all distant amusement and contempt.

He tosses out lines of verse and taunts at Sephiroth as they storm fortresses. He casts spells from his rapier – the only competent Red Mage Sephiroth has ever met – and uses his seemingly endless stock of Bahamut summons to terrorize Wutaian forces.

Were Sephiroth not already aware, he would never think the man in ill health. He never had, before. But now that he knows, he catches the minute grimaces of pain, the scowls of indignation and frustration. He is hyperaware of the vials of healing water – Holy Water, perhaps the _holiest_ of all waters – on his person, a solution literally within his hands.

But he cannot. Not yet.

* * *

“How is everything going?” Angeal asks him, voice muffled and distorted across the communicator line.

“It goes,” Sephiroth murmurs, “as war is wont to do. Bodies buried.”

Angeal hums, low and sad, “And Genesis?”

Almost unwillingly, Sephiroth’s eyes find Genesis of their own accord, the other’s face sallow and worn.

“I cannot lend you comfort without lies, I’m afraid,” Sephiroth answers eventually. Angeal says nothing in return.

A stilted silence begins to unfurl, but before it settles, Genesis calls, “Is that Angeal?”

Sephiroth passes the communicator – a jury-rigged PHS – watching with distant curiosity. With his hearing, he can still hear Angeal’s tinny replies from across the tent, and so he listens idly as they explain pleasantries, neither breaching the topic of Genesis’ unhealing wounds nor his reluctance to ask for help.

Eventually, Angeal’s responses grow longer and louder but Genesis’ become clipped and dismissive.

They end their conversation in silence. Genesis does not look at Sephiroth as he passes the communicator back, nor when he leaves.

* * *

The water burns, Sephiroth finds.

He is the only willing test subject, as he refuses – now, in this new life he has been gifted - to do to unto others what he would not be willing to endure himself. The skin of his hand, where he poured the water, is an angry red and he cannot feel his fingers.

Eventually, though, the pain passes and he feels… lighter? Suddenly the forest is much brighter, the foliage more vivid and the sunset more colorful. The pain throbbing at his temples – that he had not even realized was present – is gone and the abrupt clear-headedness startles a blink out of him.

It is like being under the effects of a Full Cure and Slow at the same time; he feels impossibly clean but the world seems to be tearing past at speeds immeasurable.

If _this_ , this clarity, this awareness, is what it is to live without JENOVA, without mako, Sephiroth might be half-tempted to divert the rest of the holy water into Midgar’s water supply himself.

* * *

In the end, Sephiroth does not have much of a choice in the _when_ of healing Genesis.

His friend’s blood is cooling sticky on his palms as he applies pressure to one of many sucking flesh wounds. A Wutaian captain had gotten lucky and left his spear buried inches deep in Genesis’ chest, triumphant even as he was soon after cut down.

“This,” Genesis pants weakly, eyes unfocused, “Is not the death of a hero.”

 _We are no heroes_ , Sephiroth wants to snap back, _We are but **dogs** , doing the unholy work of tyrants and mad men_.

Instead, he commands, “Do not speak.”

“I fear it is too late for me, my dear rival,” Genesis grins, teeth stained with blood.

“I did not take you for a coward,” Sephiroth goads, but Genesis’ only reply is to cough wetly, blood splattering the both of their faces.

Genesis stops moving – breathing – after that. Sephiroth pours the remaining three vials of the Holy Water down his throat, one after the other, and waits.

It is all he can do now; wait.

* * *

“– And they have no idea what caused it?” Angeal is asking Genesis when Sephiroth walks into the medical tent. With news of Genesis’ injury, the rest of ShinRa’s forces had been mobilized to Wutai immediately – Angeal, Zack and half the Science Department among them.

“No,” Genesis purses his lips, “Hollander just keeps blubbering on about miracles. Whatever it was, it’s apparently improved me on an atomic level.”

“Do you remember anything?”

“Just Sephiroth looking impassive in the face of my mortality,” The words are pointed, but the tone is flippant so Sephiroth merely smirks, knowing that Genesis is looking for a reaction.

“What about you, Sephiroth?”

Sephiroth does not think that Angeal is purposefully digging for information, but he knows his answer will make its way from the Turks to Hojo and Hollander regardless, so he feeds Angeal the same line he’d fed them:

“Once he stopped breathing, I kept pumping him full of Phoenix Downs and Full Cure until I was near magical exhaustion. And then again, for posterity’s sake.”

“Maybe it was the combination of White Magics?” Angeal theorizes, making an absent hand gesture.

“The way Hollander’s been carrying on, I’ve practically been re-hymenated,” Ignoring Angeal’s flustered sputtering, Genesis gives Sephiroth a slow, cautious once-over, and then continues on, “He says it’s purified me of every single genetic imperfection and might have even added some years on.”

“Genetic imperfections?” Sephiroth takes the bait. He is not above taunting Genesis.

“Yes,” is the dramatic sigh he gets in return, “You wouldn’t know of it, but we lesser mortals do have them.”

“Now that you are no mere mortal,” Sephiroth drawls, even as Angeal mutters something about them acting like _unsavory **children**_ under his breath, “Perhaps you might actually best me in a spar?”

Genesis’ face twist into an ugly look of shock before he gets hold of himself, “Well played, my friend.”

“Squabbling five year olds, the both of you,” Angeal grumbles.

* * *

Sephiroth cures Genesis of his impending degradation. And so Genesis does not defect. But of course, that is not the end of it.

Three days after his arrival in Wutai, Angeal takes a blade to the shoulder, severing the muscles.

It does not heal.

**Author's Note:**

> we've read our share of brilliant FFVII time travel fics - pretty much anything by esama or Sinnatious - and this fic was born out of the simple fact that very few of those fics don't center around Cloud. Sephiroth isn't a favorite character, but he is an _interesting_ one, and a lot of this series is going to be us just playing around with him
> 
>  
> 
> [writing/art tumblr](http://manymouths.tumblr.com)


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